Offense hurt Defense Part 2.

this is a discussion within the Saints Community Forum; If you are saying that our bad offense should have helped our bad defense a lot more, I am definitely on board with that. Remind me again of Miami\'s record? That super talented defense got them the 2nd pick in ...

If you are saying that our bad offense should have helped our bad defense a lot more, I am definitely on board with that. Remind me again of Miami\'s record? That super talented defense got them the 2nd pick in the draft, so we see what a bad offense can truly do to a team, even if they have a good defense. I am glad someone brought them up. This is getting too easy.

I\'m not clear on what is getting easy, Whodi? Maybe you could make that clearer.

I do think our offense (which was middling, not bad), could have helped out or poor defense. However, I also think that our downright poor defense could have helped out our offense just as much or more. I guess, I take the question to be this: if we were going to assign a percentage contribution to our wins to the different aspects of the team, what would it look like?

This isn\'t an argument one way or the other... yet, but here is my hunch:

Wins:
Offense - 35% (asked to win a lot of games, and often didn\'t)
Defense - 30% (was plain bad)
Special Teams - 15% (really helped us in a couple of games)
Game Plan/Coaching - 20% (when the defensive scheme was revamped and the FB was finally utilized, we played much better).

Losses:
Offense - 25% (was asked to win games, and often didn\'t)
Defense - 30% (was about as bad in wins as in losses)
Special Teams - 10% (didn\'t hurt us on the whole)
Game Plan/Coaching - 35% (ineffective game planning, poor leadership, misuse of players we do have, etc.)

It seems to me that when we were losing, the coaches were the biggest factor, and when we were winning the offense was the biggest factor (though one game the ST and the D really did step it up).

These percentages are just based on impressions and game observations, so the could certainly be way off. However, I believe that it might be worth while to see if we can find some ways to confirm these distributions - that would resolve a lot, IMO.

Does your distribution factor in that our D was top 10 in takeaways? And that a certain member of the offense was the red zone turnover leader? I think our offense was more bad than middling. How much more do you want the D to \"help\" the offense than being top 10 in takeaways? Should they also score the points for the O?

I am also basing this on the fact that the main reason we won the final four games was BECAUSE of special teams and D and not because of offense. I also don\'t see how an offense that could not score or get a first down in the first quarter of 14 of 16 games can be counted as a bigger factor than a unit that was top 10 in takeaways. I don\'t have a distribution, but I would have offense as less a factor in wins and slightly more of a factor in losses. You have to score to win right? Well, they weren\'t.

Let\'s do this cooperatively, since I, for one, don\'t think we actually disagree on that much. Here is my idea. You post your distribution, and then we\'ll see if others can get in on coming to an agreement among all of us on what the distribution is like (I\'m sure in the end, it\'ll be somewhere between yours in and mine). Maybe we can even move this to its own thread?

What say you?

On a related point, to win you must score more points than the other team, not simply score points. Scoring more points than the other team involves not only scoring points but stopping the other team from scoring points. I\'m sure we agree on that.

I don\'t want a big disagreement Kool. You can go into the thread where you said you were leaving and see where our defense CLEARLY stopped the other teams from scoring while our offense was playing dominoes on the sideline or something. I don\'t know if you refuse to see it or what. I can post it again if you like cause lynnwood asked for it.

As you can see, before the bye and early in the season, the D was doing a wonderful job in the 1st quarter(except against the AFC West) while our offense was doing poo game after game after game after game. I didn\'t even include 1st quarter TOs unless they occured on the first drive. They went through a stretch of real bad games, then got better again. Offense still doing poo. In the games where special teams bailed the O out in the first quarter late in the season, they played very well again. Now who let who down again?

This was how many punts and 3 and outs forced on the first drive of every game by the D. Also the points they gave up for the quarter. Averages to 7.3 points given up per 1st quarter, AGAIN while our offense was scoring ZERO and not getting first downs. Seems like the defense stopped people plenty, and it only includes ONE of 10th place in the league 33 turnovers they created overall. So based on THAT, and the high number of red zone turnovers, here is my distiburtion.

I\'ve posted these numbers in another thread, and I\'ll post \'em again here, cause I don\'t think you can have an HONEST conversation about what was wrong (or who\'s to blame, since we like to play the blame game here) with our defense unless you acknowledge this:

This isn\'t \"a\" game, this is a list of our poorest passing and running defensive efforts. I think we held 5 teams under a hundred, and couple of those teams got pretty close. If you dig deeper you\'ll see that we sucked against QB\'s that had a clue and did fairly well against the bad ones.

Also, is it just me, or did our defense have a hard time getting off the field all season long? I seem to remember getting frustrated about that nearly every game. I think I recall screaming something like \"STOP SOMEBODY\" followed by a few words my wife didn\'t care for. Anybody?

Once again you ignore the numbers I guess. My point is that you hollered when we said the O-Line sucked. You said, \"But fella\'s I was AT the Dallas game and man you should have seen how well they played.\" Now it\'s the Seattle game.

Without asking a question, can you comment on the rushing yards allowed and tell me how that points to our defense being done in by our offense?